Friday, March 29, 2013

“When I was a little kid, I would cry when I would strike out,” [Jeff] Keppinger said after another whiffless day at the Chicago White Sox training camp this month. “I thought everybody was looking at me like I did something horrible or I stunk really bad because I had to walk back to the dugout. I felt everyone was laughing at me in the stands.”

Keppinger, like Albert Pujols and Dustin Pedroia, is one of the select few major leaguers with more extra-base hits and walks than strikeouts in his career. He has come to bat 2,705 times in the majors and struck out just 173 times. His career average of 15.64 plate appearances per strikeout is the best among active American Leaguers.

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Keppinger is just case number 265 of the Rays getting an amazing performance out a castoff. Keppinger had 0.3 bWAR in his career before hitting .325 and putting up 2.7 WAR in TB last year. I fully expect James Loney to put up a Olerud-esque year this year.

I said in some thread a few weeks ago that I'm expecting a 135 OPS+ from Loney this season.

This is great for Keppinger, he's guaranteed almost twice what he has made in his career so far, but the commitment seems pretty strange for the White Sox. It's not enough money to hurt them if things don't go well but still, you want to be the team giving players like Keppinger a shot for $1.5 mil, not the one guaranteeing him 3/$12 after a career year.

It's odd on a number of grounds, not the least of which is that Keppinger shouldn't face most righthanders. Without studying the issue I'd guess one way that old guys end up retiring is by completely losing their inability to stay in the lineup against their adverse platoon split. Once Keppish isn't worth playing against RHP you've got a backup IFer who can only hit lefties, and probably not well enough by 2014 or 2015 to start at all in the corners v. them.

So... who the heck was offering him 2/8?*** And can a White Sox fan tell us if Ramirez and Beckham hit so badly in 2012 that the team grew desperate?

***Though, in fairness, Keppinger was worth around 2.5 boWAR in both 2010 and 2012, and would have been worth his current deal in 2011, albeit barely. Maybe we're just used to seeing this kind of player go for a proverbial song, and that's why this feels like too much money and two too many years.